Articles
Overcoming Temptation, Doubts and Loss of Faith
I grew up in a Christian home, with loving parents, a brother and a sister. We attended a faithful local church, and from an early age I received excellent instruction from God’s word. I believed the things that I was taught about God, and the Bible’s instructions regarding righteous living seemed right and noble.
Although I believed in God, my faith was severely challenged from the start. The shipwreck began very early – with enrollment in public school. I was heavily influenced by my classmates to act in unchristian ways. Because I valued my friends’ opinions of me, I began to develop a habit of secrecy around my family and any other Christians with whom I associated. In the company of my classmates, I was ashamed of and kept secret my Christianity. In the company of my family and Christian friends, I was ashamed of and kept secret my worldly behavior. I was living two separate lives; both were very real, yet it left me feeling very fake, when in the company of either group. As the years went by, this developed into very rebellious behavior. Although I had been baptized into Jesus Christ for the remission of my sins, and I believed in God and His inspired word, I did not have the courage to stand up for my faith, lest I suffer the shame of derision, ridicule, and potential rejection by my worldly friends. Thus, I became very bitter, angry, and resentful.
By the time I was finishing high school, I could not stand my hypocrisy any longer, and felt an urgency to choose one side or the other. I left my loving Christian home and the church and I delved even further into the dregs of worldly living. Ultimately it did not have the pleasurable effect I desired, there was no sense of fulfillment and the bitterness I harbored did not retreat. I tried to drown my guilt and shame with drugs and alcohol, which only brought more misery. I was living out Proverbs 23:29ff:
"Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has contentions? Who has complaints? Who has wounds without cause? Who has redness of eyes? Those who linger long at the wine, those who go in search of mixed wine. Do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls around smoothly; at the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like a viper. Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things. Yes, you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, or like one who lies at the top of the mast, saying: 'They have struck me, but I was not hurt; they have beaten me, but I did not feel it. When shall I awake, that I may seek another drink?'"
Eventually, becoming desperate to find a way out of that pathetic state (but still ashamed of the gospel), I turned to the mystic eastern religions. I wanted to be tranquil and have peace, satisfaction, fulfillment, and inner harmony, like the monk meditating on the mountain, at one with nature. I wanted all the peace and joy that these religions claimed to offer.
With my increasing urgency to change in some way, I set out hitchhiking. I wandered around the country, living in the woods and associating with other travelers, many of whom followed mystic religions. They would say things like, “We are all one, and the universe is within you. Even the Bible says ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you!’” During those years, I developed a pantheistic mindset. Basically, I believed that God, in order to avoid His eternal loneliness, amuses Himself by playing “hide and seek,” pretending not to be God. For a time I really believed that was true, I felt it to be true. I believe that this is a great snare for many people, when their feelings and emotions are the chief factors in their process of “realizing” truth, instead of discovering truth by logic and evidence.
A big part of my mindset at that time was a philosophy of self-denial, derived from the Buddhist idea that suffering is caused by desire. I thought that I would become enlightened by learning indifference to experiences, whether good or bad, so I would do things like going without food until it was eventually offered to me, living without money, and forgoing shelter in bad weather. Of course, this did nothing more than increase my discomfort. It reminds me of what Paul said, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations – ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’ (referring to things that all perish as they are used) – according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:20-23).
That pantheistic mindset (I didn’t have a name for it at the time) was the apex of my attempt to attain salvation through my own actions, apart from God, and to explain away any personal accountability. Although it was an appealing mindset, it contained no direction for how to live, and it led to a few unavoidable questions. Mainly, if everything (myself included) is God, and God is everything, then why had I been seeking the approval of others? Why did I rely on practices and substances that were not bringing satisfaction? There was also the paradox of the universe and God being identical and yet separate, and the paradox that the universe created the universe.
As I began retracing the series of events that led me to that point in my life, I realized that it was all very simple, that all of my misery traced back to the broken relationship with my family, as well as my spiritual family in Christ, and that broken relationship stemmed from a refusal to stand up for what I had truly believed. I knew I needed to resolve those relationships, and it could only be done by resolving my Christianity. However, I was unwilling to simply adopt my old hypocrisy again. I wanted to go back, but I needed it to be genuine.
From that point, I stopped running away from my problems and began to resolve them. I quit smoking, and stopped using drugs and alcohol. When I started thinking about truth objectively, I began to see that wanting something to be true does not make it true. When I reinvestigated biblical evidence, I began to see the congruency of the Scriptures: the solution for man’s problem, the common theme through many writers over many centuries, and the compatibility with archaeology and nonbiblical history. After investigating the events of the first century I soon found it hard to believe that Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead.
As I began to change my lifestyle to adhere to God’s commandments, I saw the goodness and wisdom of the commands: that they are for our benefit. I set aside what I wanted God to be, and finally acknowledged God as the God that He claims to be. I acknowledged my sin and foolishness; I reached a point of repentance, resolving to trust in Jesus and be obedient to God’s commands with all of my mind and strength. I am learning the Christian way of self-denial, not pertaining to outward things like food and shelter, but pertaining to the inward things of the heart. I have found great joy in cherishing and keeping God’s word.
